Some VB6 and Windows Forms applications are still great but probably you need them to reach a bigger audience.

There are now amazing devices with internet access, but all of then different in hardware and software combinations.

HTML and in particular HTML5 five technologies provide an unifying set of technologies that are supported by the main industry vendors. HTML5 browsers are available on tables, cell phones, linux/mac/windows PCs.

In this post I will add references to other pages which do a great work on explaining how to use this approach to host a Windows Forms App inside a WebBrowser.

The technique described here is a deployment solution to ease distribution of applications modernized from legacy technologies to Windows Forms, maybe using the Artinsoft\Mobilize.NET tools ;)

NOTE: "This workaround of .NET Winforms to WPF and then hosting it in a browser isn't truly moving a Windows based application to a web based application. e.g. database calls will be made from inside the browser on the users PC to the database, not via the IIS server. Therefore this functionality is most useful if you have connected your Winforms UI to you back-end code using web services, then you can have a somewhat web based application."

In this post I will add references to other pages which do a great work on explaining how to use this approach to host a Windows Forms App inside a WebBrowser.

The technique described here is a deployment solution to ease distribution of applications modernized from legacy technologies to Windows Forms, maybe using the Artinsoft\Mobilize.NET tools ;)

NOTE: "This workaround of .NET Winforms to WPF and then hosting it in a browser isn't truly moving a Windows based application to a web based application. e.g. database calls will be made from inside the browser on the users PC to the database, not via the IIS server. Therefore this functionality is most useful if you have connected your Winforms UI to you back-end code using web services, then you can have a somewhat web based application."

I think Silverlight is a great technology that can be use to create great applications, or as a migration target from Visual Basic 6, Powerbuilder or Windows Forms apps which can take advantage of a very simplified deployment approach.

"In the past, Web developers often used ActiveX controls to provide rich client-side functionality in their Web applications. Now developers can easily build objects using the Microsoft .NET Framework that are more compact, lightweight, secure and can be hosted within Internet Explorer. By hosting .NET Windows Forms controls in Internet Explorer, developers can accomplish many client-side Web development goals..."

This is an excellent introduction from ThiruThangarathinamarticle in CodeGuru

Artinsoft\Mobilize.Net helps legacy application to be modernized using the Windows Forms technology. Doing this upgrade revitalizes your application code and allows you to take advantage of the new platforms features like ClickOnce deployment.

"ClickOnce is a deployment technology that enables you to create self-updating Windows-based applications that can be installed and run with minimal user interaction. Visual Studio provides full support for publishing and updating applications deployed with ClickOnce technology if you have developed your projects with Visual Basic and Visual C#.

ClickOnce deployment overcomes three major issues in deployment:

Difficulties in updating applications. With Microsoft Windows Installer deployment, whenever an application is updated, the user can install an update, an msp file, and apply it to the installed product; with ClickOnce deployment, you can provide updates automatically. Only those parts of the application that have changed are downloaded, and then the full, updated application is reinstalled from a new side-by-side folder.

Impact to the user's computer. With Windows Installer deployment, applications often rely on shared components, with the potential for versioning conflicts; with ClickOnce deployment, each application is self-contained and cannot interfere with other applications.

In the past, these issues sometimes caused developers to decide to create Web applications instead of Windows-based applications, sacrificing a rich user interface for ease of installation. By using applications deployed using ClickOnce, you can have the best of both technologies."

Click Once Deployment Strategies

There are 3 deployment strategies:

Install from Web or a Network Share

Install from a CD

Start from the Web or Network share

Quick Overview

For a quick overview of how to use the ClickOnce deployment take a look at ShaharGvirtz's post http://weblogs.asp.net/shahar/archive/2008/01/29/how-to-use-clickonce-to-deploy-your-applications.aspx